Laura Linney Quotes

You have to relish the challenge of television.

You can watch someone on-stage cry and cry – but in the audience you feel nothing. It’s easy to become indulgent. For me, what’s important is the story first.

Working with special needs children is hard.

With big, emotional roles it’s very easy, especially if you’ve grown up in the American school of acting, to exploit your own pain. You have to be careful about that, because 9 times out of 10, your pain is not appropriate to the character.

What I love about a play is that it’s such an investment because only time can create a lot of what happens onstage.

What I hope in my ideal world is that with each project, I’ll either get to work with a really great script that would force me to grow, or work with a really great actor who will make me better.

The only really conscious decision I made was to cast my net wide and if the work was good, to do it.

The goal seems to me at times just to be business first.

The entertainment industry is terrified of silence.

Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.

Some people’s personalities are so compelling that they command attention.

My parents were divorced and I would spend weekends with my father.

My family is from the South, and I can remember all those ladies I grew up with, like my great-aunts, who had handkerchiefs. There’s something sweet about them.

My castings sort of go in phases. There’ll be several icy professional parts – a lawyer or a cop. And then there’ll be the intelligent-but-wounded group and then the period things. It goes in sequence.

It’s very hard to put forth a film that’s about love and the joy of love and for it not to be patronising and not make people nauseous or make them roll their eyes.

If you have two parents who have to work, who want to work, you need to have someone to guide your child.

I’ve seen the greatest actors in the world, transcendent talents, who can’t find a home.

I’m very hard on my bags because I tend to carry a lot of stuff with me.

I’m sure my father had more to do with my career than I would like to give him credit for. I would love to think it was all me!

I’m not someone who likes to have my picture taken, let alone see it plastered all over the place.